Although you can enjoy much of this website without javascript, we highly recommend that you enable it
in order to experience all available features.

Cookies on What Doctors Don't Tell You

We set cookies so you can manage your account and navigate the site, and to remember your cookie preferences so that you don't keep getting this message. To accept cookies, just keep browsing,
otherwise use the links on the right to adjust your cookie settings or find out more.

New guidelines now define half of all adults as having dangerously high blood pressure, requiring drugs for the rest of their lives. Lynne McTaggart and Bryan Hubbard offer alternatives to your doctor's prescription

Painkillers during pregnancy increase risk of serious birth defects

About the author:&nbsp

Around a third of pregnant women take a prescription painkiller, such as codeine, oxycodone or morphine, but few realise the drugs increase the risk for serious birth defects in the baby's brain, spine and heart

Around a third of pregnant women take a prescription painkiller, such as codeine, oxycodone or morphine, but few realise the drugs increase the risk for serious birth defects in the baby's brain, spine and heart.

The drugs-which are given for suppressing severe pain-also increase the risk of a preterm birth, and for the baby to suffer withdrawal symptoms when born, a condition known as neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

And some women could be taking the drugs when they don't realise they are pregnant. As around half of all pregnancies are unplanned, this is a very real possibility, say researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The researchers say that women taking any powerful painkiller should also be practising effective birth control. In the US alone, a baby is born with a birth defect every four-and-a-half minutes, and 20 per cent of deaths in the first year of life are caused by birth defects.